Surovi's Sundarbans: From Tiger Widows to Bonbibi

In 2018, artist Soma Surovi Jannat first drew widespread attention with her debut solo exhibition, 'Dhushor Rekha Britti'. Presented at the Alliance Française gallery, the exhibition introduced a distinctive approach to drawing that immediately set her apart. This artistic direction continued to evolve in the 2020 Dhaka Art Summit, where she presented an installation centered on drawing on a much larger scale. By then, it had become clear that she had established a distinctive artistic language and mode of presentation entirely her own.

At the Art Summit, Soma Surovi Jannat didn't just create a stir, she went on to win the Samdani Art Award. According to the jury, the award recognised her "highly innovative drawing, installation, and painting." They observed that her work was not only unmistakably personal but also deeply socially conscious. Her command of space extended beyond the confines of the canvas, and at times even beyond the boundaries of the studio, to present a fresh and imaginative approach to storytelling.

This award and recognition marked a new chapter in Surovi's artistic journey. In Sufi philosophy, there is a saying that it is the journey, not the destination that matters. The same may be said of art: the journey itself is what really matters. It has no fixed endpoint, no time limit, and no real conclusion. For now, however, one significant stop along Surovi's artistic journey is the Ashmolean Museum, the oldest public museum in the United Kingdom. This renowned museum of art and archaeology in Oxford is currently hosting her solo exhibition.

How did Surovi come this far? Winning the Dhaka Art Summit award opened the door to international recognition of her work. It was through this connection that several researchers at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford nominated her for an artist residency. Following a rigorous selection process, Surovi was chosen as an Artist in Residence.

The residency introduces contemporary artists to the museum's collections and research. It offers far more than the opportunity to view artworks displayed behind gallery glass: participants are also granted access to study rooms and museum archives. The aim is to enable artists to draw inspiration from the museum's historic collections and transform that inspiration into new creative work. Surovi made full use of this opportunity.

No artistic process can be rushed. It requires patience, sustained attention, and time. Surovi remained faithful to this principle in engaging with the museum's collections. She spent long hours carefully studying hundreds of miniature paintings, sculptures, ceramics, and other works of art. It was as though she were swimming in the vast ocean of art in search of an elixir.
What an artist creates can never be separated from the experiences that shape them. These experiences may come from what they have seen, heard, read, lived through, from family and social relationships, from dreams, from the imagination itself. Surovi's work, too, grows out of her experiences and the reflections and imaginations they inspire.

After completing her undergraduate studies at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Dhaka, she went on to earn her Master's degree at Visva-Bharati University in Santiniketan. There she lived in close proximity to nature. She mingled  with the Santal community. These experiences deepened her reflections on the relationships between humans, animals, and the natural world.

As human beings, we perceive the living world through our own eyes. But how do animals see? What do they see? Such questions, and the curiosity they awaken, can spark a sense of curiosity in an artist's mind. These thoughts continually resurfaced in Surovi's consciousness and artistic endeavours in different forms.

During her residency, she absorbed a wealth of inspiration from the museum's collections, selecting and filtering elements in her own way, whether symbols, colours, visual motifs, or artistic techniques. After returning, she produced a new body of work that naturally reflected the influence of her residency experience. Several of these works were exhibited at Colomboscope, Sri Lanka's contemporary art festival.

Photographs of these works caught the attention of Professor Mallika Kumbera Landrās, Curator of South Asian Art at the Ashmolean Museum. She travelled to Sri Lanka to see the works in person and recognised the profound influence that the Ashmolean's collections had had on Surovi''s ideas and artistic practice. It was on this basis that the museum decided to present a solo exhibition of Surovi's works.

Her enduring interest in animals, nature, humans, and the relationships between them, led Surovi to choose the Sundarbans as the central theme of the exhibition. The works on display are the result of nearly three years of artistic practice. Enriched by the close observation, research, and creative engagement she undertook with the Ashmolean Museum's collections during her residency, the exhibition, 'Climate Culture Care,' reflects the depth of that experience.

The exhibition features twenty-two artworks across several series. One of them, Timeless Sweet Land, predates the residency. Surovi's ancestral home is in Lalmonirhat, where she spent much of her childhood. The painting draws on those memories: her mother and cousins gathered around the dining table. It is imbued with the warmth of family relationships and surrounded by nostalgic recollections of a carefree childhood. All of the other works were created after the residency, informed by the artworks she encountered there and the many forms of inspiration she drew from them. This earlier work offers a useful point of comparison, revealing how a different place and a different set of experiences reshaped Surovi's thinking and artistic process.

For now, the principal ways of encountering Surovi's exhibition at the Ashmolean Museum are through the exhibition catalogue and conversations with the artist. The catalogue provides a comprehensive introduction to the exhibition, including descriptions and interpretations of every work. Yet because Surovi's practice depends so heavily on intricate line drawing, the reproduced images inevitably fall short of experiencing the originals firsthand.

Surovi's artistic journey at the Ashmolean has also influenced her approach to colour. This is particularly evident in Resensitize the Brown Image. The work draws inspiration from the historical representation of clay idols within the Indian caste system and from the many shades of brown that have long characterised depictions of South Asian people.

The exhibition catalogue also notes the influence of modern Indian painter Prabhakar Barwe's book 'The Blank Canvas' on Surovi's thinking.

The series Where Every Leaf Holds a Tale presents eight islands of the Sundarbans as metaphoric leaves. Each island -- Chandreshwar, Kalir Char, Hoyborol, Dimer Char, Banishanta, Dhainchabaria Char, Shyamnagar, and Tiger Leg -- holds its own constellation of stories. Here, nature is not simply a backdrop but an active protagonist.

Time and again, the Sundarbans has demonstrated its role as the guardian of Bangladesh's coastline, protecting both human lives and fragile ecosystems. Its tidal ecology, aerial roots, and intricate network of waterways absorb carbon, buffer devastating cyclones, and sustain the livelihoods of fishermen and honey collectors alike.

Yet our exploitation of the Sundarbans continues unabated. Human negligence and unchecked greed are eroding its biodiversity, polluting its rivers and canals, and poisoning its environment through industrial waste and emissions from nearby coal-fired power plants. One can imagine how deeply these realities affect an artist whose work is rooted in profound empathy for the natural world.

In Where Every Leaf Holds a Tale, Surovi views the islands from a bird's-eye perspective. Across these eight islands she unfolds a multitude of narratives, drawing on local folklore, rituals, beliefs and superstitions, animals, the relationships between humans and animals, livelihoods, stories of birth and loss, trade, human greed, and social inequality.

The stories include grasshoppers laying eggs; a tiger with a fish caught in its jaws or a bone lodged in its throat; ripe fruit falling from trees; uprooted trees; the masks worn on the back of the head to ward off tiger attacks; the protective figures of Bonbibi, Durga, and Kali; the forest spirit Yakshi; the black dot applied to avert the evil eye; the folk tale of "the kite that stole someone's ear"; fallen birds and blood-stained eggs; pregnant women whose navels transform into mangrove breathing roots; tourism in the Sundarbans; shrimp farming; and traditional otter-assisted fishing. On the surface, these are simple stories. Ultimately, however, they invite profound reflection. Within each leaf-shaped island, these narratives are rendered with remarkable delicacy, recalling the intricate detail and visual language of South Asian miniature painting.

She Carries the River in Her Skin is a thirty-foot site-specific drawing executed directly on the gallery walls, spanning two adjoining surfaces. Like all ephemeral wall drawings, it will physically cease to exist when the exhibition closes. Yet creating the work across nearly sixty feet of wall, rising ten feet high, took Surovi approximately twenty-six days. In an ecologically endangered world, it is those at the very bottom of society's power structure - marginalised communities, women, and children - who suffer the greatest consequences. They are also the primary victims of climate change.

At the centre of the drawing is a swirling form, resembling the eye of a storm as seen in satellite imagery. A chain of five interconnected boats creates a wave-like rhythm across the composition, each vessel carrying its own visual narratives. At the point where the two walls meet, Surovi deliberately divides the male and female figures. The work also evokes the lives of the Sundarbans' "tiger widows" -- women whose husbands have been killed by tigers and who are often stigmatised by society as swami-kheko, or "husband-eaters." According to the exhibition catalogue, the work was influenced by From Time to Time by the veteran Indian artist Nalini Malani, whose practice frequently addresses the struggles of marginalised communities through the perspective of women.

The series of ten circular paintings is titled Who Carries Whom? At its core is the relationship between humans and animals. Although turtles, fish, elephants, deer, and tigers all appear, the series revolves primarily around the horse. Throughout history, horses have been inseparable from warfare, communication, agriculture, and the development of civilisation. Yet the works point to a harsher reality: animals are valued only so long as they remain useful to humans. Once their utility ends, they are discarded and forgotten.

Between the Sea and Sky, Who Holds the Ground?, a scroll measuring thirty feet ten inches in length, unfolds across multiple sections. This monumental visual narrative tells the story of people displaced by climate change. Trees, animals, insects, the Sundarbans and its ecosystem, Bonbibi (the female spirit of the forest), water, and soil all become characters within the narrative. Bound together in an intricate web of interdependence, they collectively confront the threats posed by a changing climate. Climate change, the work suggests, is not merely a natural phenomenon but one in which human responsibility is paramount.

Surovi also draws extensively on visual ideas inspired by works she encountered in the Ashmolean Museum's collections.

Alongside Surovi Jannat's twenty-two artworks, the exhibition includes twenty-eight historical objects selected from the Ashmolean Museum's own collections. The museum's vast holdings have profoundly shaped her artistic thinking and practice, and these works were chosen to illuminate that dialogue. Displaying Surovi's contemporary works alongside these historical objects creates a conversation between past and present. Visitors are able to see not only the sources of her inspiration but also how she has reinterpreted and transformed history within a contemporary artistic language.

The exhibition is curated by Professor Mallika Kumbera Landrās, Head of Eastern Art and Curator of South Asian Art at the Ashmolean Museum. The project has been supported by Seher and Taimur Hasan, the British Council, the Samdani Art Foundation, Sotheby's, Neha and Sumedh Jaisal through Goldman Sachs Gives, the Charles Wallace Bangladesh Trust, and Gallery Espace (New Delhi).

The exhibition opened on 28 March and will remain on view until 30 November.

* This art review appeared in Prothom Alo print and online and has been translated here by Ayesha Kabir for Prothom Alo English Online